The justification for maintaining such public lists rests on the presumption that sex offenders have higher recidivism rates than other criminals--though Bureau of Justice statistics indicate that rapists are substantially less likely than other violent and nonviolent criminals to be rearrested for the same crime.

Meanwhile, victimization reports from the Bureau of Justice Statistics show that, in 1973, one in three Americans reported experiencing some form of property crime or violence during the preceding six months and, by 1992, the figure had dropped to one in four.

A recent Bureau of Justice Statistics survey of 14,000 state and 6,000 federal prisoners found that eight out of 10 had at least one prior conviction; approximately half had been incarcerated for violent crimes, while more than 60 percent had a past history of violence.